While this isn’t “new” news, for those of you B2B marketers who view Twitter as the “social media flavor of the moment,” you may want to take note about the strategic moves underway that continues to increase Twitter’s relevance for B2B marketing. While I am not a personal fan of using Twitter to share updates about the “best fries ever” I just ate or feeling the need to post a picture of my latest pair of new socks or that Ashton Kutcher has over a million followers, B2B companies should care about both being in the conversation going on between their customers on Twitter AND how these posts are now showing up in Google (and Bing) search results.
Recently, Google announced that they believe Twitter adds value to search and Google is now including Twitter updates in Google search results. Google believes this near real-time data from Tweets can make search more relevant and timely. As an example, the next time someone searches for the product or service your B2B company provides, real-time observations (positive and negative) from your customers who are tweeting about your company will be included in the search results.
This is a meaningful validation of the Twitter business and the mark it is making on B2B marketing. I believe this agreement between Google and Twitter is a good thing and accelerates the imperative for B2B marketers to embrace Twitter and social media in general as important tools to infuse customer and market dialogue and insights into positioning, messaging and development of marketing programs. With Google and Microsoft partnered up with Twitter on search, Twitter is here to stay and marketers should ignore Twitter and other social media at their peril.
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